Google miracle and Lourdes and you get 680,000 hits. Google miracle and U.S. hockey and you get 21/2 times that.

With the overuse of the word, it's almost quaint to actually ponder its primary definition and how many of even the most faithful might believe in divine miracles.

And within that realm, let's separate the biblical miracles from what I think of as the "modern" miracles, those said to have happened within the last 150 years, such as Lourdes, Fatima and Padre Pio.

Of these, we have photos of the subjects, we know precisely where the miracles are to have occurred, and we have sworn accounts of people who have lived within our lifetimes. Yet these require even greater faith, it seems, since they call for a belief in the God of the here and now.

I'm not saying you must believe in Lourdes, Fatima or Pio to have faith. I'm merely reveling in the tremendous faith of some 40 souls who boarded West Coast flights to France last week, bound for the waters of Lourdes, where in 1858 a 14-year-old peasant girl named Bernadette said the Virgin Mary appeared to her.

The testimonies of those who claim to have been healed after bathing at Lourdes (and of doctors) is, as they say, more than enough to convince believers and will never be enough to convince cynics. Again, it's not my intent to sell anything other than the convictions held by O.C. residents who are on the nine-day pilgrimage.

Every year at Catholic parishes, applications are taken from individuals who have terminal or life-changing illnesses. Local chapters of the Order of Malta - an ancient organization of lay people - evaluate the cases and select which sick people, or malades, will make the trip. In the western U.S., the order selects 42 malades, pays the $3,000-per-person cost, makes the arrangements and provides escorts.

Keith Morton of Costa Mesa was born without a spleen. An infection most infants would have fought off cost Keith both legs below the knees and most of his fingers.

Keith is 13 now, and on steel legs he walks five blocks to St. John the Baptist School every day. I drove over to his house one afternoon. Keith is shy, so I spent most of the time talking to his parents. Keith has had more than a dozen surgeries on his limbs, but his main problem now is the potential for renal failure because the infection destroyed kidney tissue. He faces a lifetime of transplants.

What miracle do they seek at Lourdes?

"For him to be able to avoid the dialysis and transplants," says Mary Morton, who is traveling with her son.

When I ask the question of Keith, he utters the closest thing all afternoon to a complete sentence: "Growing new hands and feet."

Lori Hale, 46, was first diagnosed with breast cancer eight years ago. She underwent surgery. Four years later, it was back, Stage 4. She also was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Hale remembered a friend who had gone to Lourdes on behalf of a child who had a heart disorder and was too ill to travel. She brought back the water. The child recovered.

"It made a lasting impression on me, her passion and faith in Lourdes," Hale says.

She applied in 2004 but was deemed too sick to travel. Finally, last year, Hale was chosen. The experience of being dipped in the pool brought her to tears, but she speaks just as passionately about the entire week she spent at the sacred grotto.

"You can't come back the same person that you went. I believe that more than anything.

"I think every malade goes there hoping (for a) cure, but that might not be God's plan. But they come home with a new spirit, a new hope that their condition is not nearly as bad as the 50,000 other people they see at Lourdes. That whatever they have, they can live with."

Since her return, Hale says, she has been diagnosed cancer-free. Last week, she got back on the plane to France to serve as a companion for this year's malades.

When I went to Hale's house in Coto de Caza, I realized she lives on the same block as - midway between, in fact - the homes of the producer and a main subject of "The Real Housewives of Orange County." If nothing else, perhaps, the miracle is that somehow, in this vortex of banality, real faith thrives.

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